


Meat and Potatoes

by Snickfic



Series: Author's Favorites [21]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Belly Kink, Body Worship, Feelings, M/M, Retirement, Weight Gain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 07:47:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16300985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/pseuds/Snickfic
Summary: “Geno keeping you well-fed, eh?” Talbo said.Sid grinned lazily, stretched out his legs, and patted his stomach, considerably fuller than it’d been the last time he played an NHL game. “Nah, that’s mostly me. Hard to lose the appetite, you know?”





	Meat and Potatoes

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to sevenfists for enabling, betaing, _and_ titling this fic. Originally posted to [zhenyabest](https://zhenyabest.tumblr.com/post/179029786154/kinktober-day-13-weight-gain-the-twenty-year) on Tumblr.

The twenty-year anniversary was a circus, the PensTV crew up in everyone’s business, guys flying in from all over that Zhenya wasn’t sure had even won the Cup. “Hey G, this is my wife,” said a guy with a little fringe of sandy-gray hair and two missing eye teeth. “And my kids.” Surely Zhenya would have remembered the teeth, at least. It took Kuni clapping the guy on the back and calling him by name for Zhenya to place him as a call-up back in ’09. Zhenya thought he’d dressed for one game or maybe two, early in the post-season.

There were too many people, and Zhenya cared about very few of them. It was Sid who circulated, shaking each hand that presented itself, meeting every new kid with enthusiasm. He bent a couple of times with the clear intention of squatting to meet some kid’s eye before he remembered in time. There was a twist to his lips each time, as he stopped—the last stain of old trauma, not quite wiped away with time.

At last, though, it was Sid who plotted their escape. He led Zhenya through underground hallways to a maintenance door and then along a back wall to Sid’s road-weary Tesla. “Where we go?” Zhenya asked, not that he cared overmuch.

“Meat and Potatoes,” Sid said, like Zhenya should have known. “Some of the guys are meeting up.” Zhenya hoped that he would at least remember these guys. 

He needn’t have worried. The faces in the private room at the back of restaurant were all familiar: TK and Talbo, Kuni and Duper and Tanger, Gonch and Billy G. They were older, all of them. Gonch looked quite the venerable patriarch these days, as Zhenya made sure to tell him. Talbo was entirely gray on top and on his chin except for two dark streaks like muttonchops in his beard, persistent even after all these years. Zhenya had barely any hair at all, of course, and of course he heard about it. 

“Bald like an egg,” Tanger said, stroking Zhenya’s head. Tanger had gone silver fox, the fucker, as much a ladykiller as he ever was—or he would be, if he had eyes for anyone but Catherine. 

Zhenya geared up to defend his honor. He had _some_ hair. More than that call-up with the missing teeth, anyway. But Sid got there first. “I like his head,” he said mildly. _Almost_ innocently, although after this many years Zhenya liked to think that he knew all of Sid’s tells. He knew this one, anyway, how carefully Sid was biting down on one set of canines to keep from smiling.

Talbo hooted and said something undoubtedly sewer-filthy in French. Tanger shot back a reply, Duper rolled his eyes to the heavens. This wasn’t how group dinners had gone when Sid and Zhenya first started telling their friends, but it was how they went now. Zhenya took a gulp of wine to swallow a lump in his throat.

“And you’re looking happy and healthy,” TK told Sid. “Retired life agreeing with you?”

If someone had asked that question five years ago, after Sid’s final surgery, Zhenya would have punched them, friend or foe. But nobody who mattered had asked five years ago. They knew better. And now Sid could smile, crooked and genuine, and say, “Pretty well, yeah. There were some rough patches—” A wildly deceptive understatement. “—but it’s been good, the last couple of years.”

“Geno keeping you well-fed, eh?” Talbo said.

Sid grinned lazily, stretched out his legs, and patted his stomach, considerably fuller than it’d been the last time he played an NHL game. “Nah, that’s mostly me. Hard to lose the appetite, you know?”

“God, yes,” Jordy said with a groan.

“How’s the hockey school?” TK asked. Zhenya and Tanger and Duper all groaned. “What?”

“He never stop talk now,” Zhenya said. “You remember later, is your fault.”

“Fuck off,” Sid said, laughing. “It’s doing good. We’re up to four sessions in the summer now—”

“And how many of those kids are on scholarships?” Kuni asked.

“The right number,” Sid said, laughing again at the face Duper made.

Zhenya stretched an arm along the back of Sid’s chair and tuned out the words. He focused instead on the sound of them, the flow of English and French that washed back and forth over him like the tide over a sandbar. It was Sid’s voice he paid special attention to, to its easy, warm cadences. Absently he thumbed along Sid’s collarbone. There was novelty still in touching Sid in public. Maybe Sid felt that way, too; maybe it was why Zhenya got away with it with no more than a dirty look.

Then again, Zhenya wasn’t sure the thrill would ever completely fade. Maybe he’d keep on mildly annoying Sid with PDAs for the rest of their days.

\--

“It’s good to see the guys,” Sid said. He closed the front door behind himself and began toeing off his shoes. 

“We not done see,” Zhenya pointed out. “Lots more tomorrow. Media, fancy dinner. Dress up.” He said the last with distaste. When he retired, he thought he’d put American formalwear behind him. Possibly he’d have had more luck with that if he’d put America behind him, too, but he was years too late for that.

“You are such a whiner,” Sid said, too fondly for the words to sting. “People stuck that label on the wrong guy.”

“True. You never complain. Not if people wear shoes in house, drink all special beer, leave wrinkles in bed cover—”

“Okay, okay,” Sid said. His lips were pressed thin, as if keeping back a smile meant he’d won.

Zhenya couldn’t let him hold onto that delusion. He stepped close, sliding his hands inside Sid’s suit jacket and resting them on his hips. They were fuller now, too. Even at the peak of fitness, Sid had had extra layers along his obliques that he’d insisted were muscle. Now they were just love handles, aptly named, because Zhenya loved handling them. Zhenya stroked his thumb along one side. 

Immediately Sid squirmed out of his hold, unamused.

Zhenya loved tickling Sid. He loved straddling him on the bed and running his fingers along Sid’s side and across his soft underbelly until Sid couldn’t even breathe from laughing. Eventually Sid would flip them over and fuck Zhenya like he had something to prove—the best of all possible outcomes. 

Except instead of that, sometimes Sid just stalked away angry, and Zhenya didn’t want to take that risk today. Anyway, they’d both stuffed themselves pretty thoroughly at lunch. Instead he reached for Sid’s hands, drawing him in again. He bent and kissed at the scowl until it softened. “Maybe we go to bed now,” he whispered.

“Oh yeah?” Sid smiled against Zhenya’s mouth, amused but willing to humor him. “Hanging out with a bunch of bald toothless guys gets you hot?”

“You get me hot,” Zhenya said, past the point of teasing. He gave that tempting softness above Sid’s hip a squeeze, not very gentle. “Always.”

“Jesus,” Sid said.

The journey up the stairs and down the hall took time, as if a day reminiscing about younger days had made them young again, sneaking kisses at the base of the stairs, copping feels on the landing. By the time they made it inside the bedroom door, Sid had pulled Zhenya’s shirt tails out of his pants, and Zhenya had tugged Sid’s tie loose. The afternoon light filtering in through the blinds caught Sid’s face and lit his eyes, sparkling with anticipation.

It was too much, suddenly. Zhenya abandoned his efforts to get Sid out of his jacket and instead pulled Sid to him and held on.

“Geno?”

“I’m fine,” Zhenya said, pressing his face into Sid’s hair. “Just a minute.”

“Okay.” Sid stroked Zhenya’s arm. It wasn’t the first time Zhenya had been overcome with inopportune feeling. At this point Sid just knew to wait him out. After a few moments of holding Sid and listening to his steady breathing, Zhenya got himself together again. He bent, ever so carefully, and took the shell of Sid’s ear between his teeth.

“ _Geno_.” Sid shoved him backwards, then rolled his eyes at Zhenya’s grin. “Asshole.”

“Come on,” Zhenya said, sliding his hands under Sid’s jacket, over his shoulders. “Off.”

So Sid, who seemed to have decided he was humoring Zhenya today—an excellent decision all around—let Zhenya unwrap him, piece by piece. The jacket, draped over a chair. The dress shirt, umbuttoned with hasty fingers. 

Zhenya paused to kiss Sid again, and Sid leaned in, pressing the stiffening line of his dick against Zhenya’s thigh. “Come on, Geno.” He always ran out of patience before Zhenya did; he was, fundamentally, a very straightforward soul. Give him a car that didn’t break down and a suit he didn’t have to think about and a meal composed mostly of meat, get him off with minimal fuss, and he was happy.

But today Zhenya wanted to fuss. “I want to see you,” he said, tugging on the hem of Sid’s undershirt.

“You see me all the time,” Sid pointed out, but he let Zhenya strip the shirt off him anyway, unbuckle Sid’s belt and slide his pants over the swell of that still-impressive ass. Belt and pants fell to the carpet with a muffled clank, and Sid stepped out of them. Then there Sid was in his briefs and sock feet, the mellow autumn light washing over him.

Zhenya did see him all the time, but now he looked anew, trying to adjust the angle of his thoughts to see what the guys at lunch had seen. Scars twisted around his knee, though of course no one would have seen those. The crow’s feet at the corners of Sid’s eyes were prominent now, the legacy of a lifetime of smiling until his eyes disappeared. The perpetual softness under his jaw was threatening to become a proper double chin. The gut he’d been working on the past few years had grown maybe a bit more than Zhenya had noticed. It had snuck up on him.

Sid crossed his arms over his chest—which was softer now, too. He was flushing a dull red. “Well?”

Zhenya had spent too long looking. He pulled Sid in close. “I like,” he said, kissing Sid’s hair.

“You’d better,” Sid grumbled. “It’s for you, you know.”

It took Zhenya a few more kisses—the shell of Sid’s ear, the newly-fleshy underside of his jaw—before the words caught up to him. He pulled back to squint at Sid. “What’s for me?”

“You know,” Sid repeated. He gestured to himself.

“Sid,” Zhenya said, a strange suspicion stealing over him. “What’s for me.”

“Well, you always seemed—when I started getting heavier, you seemed into it. So.”

Zhenya still didn’t quite believe what Sid was half-saying. He took a pinch of Sid on each side—those love handles, infinitely squeezable—and said, “You do for me?”

“I mean, I didn’t really try to put on weight. I just didn’t try not to, you know? It’s not like it was hard. You know how I like to eat. ” Sid was starting to look a bit embarrassed about the whole thing, like he wished he hadn’t brought it up.

Zhenya absolutely couldn’t have that. “Sid,” he breathed, sweeping his hands up Sid’s sides, where gentle rolls were developing. They were developing _for Zhenya_. “I like so much.”

“Yeah?” Sid said, eyes sparkling again. “I don’t know if I believe you. You’d better show me.”

So Zhenya stripped, at Sid’s insistence, and stretched Sid out on the bed. Then he crawled on top of Sid and begun to catalogue with kisses one parcel of that sun-browned landscape at a time. He kissed the extra fullness under Sid’s jaw again. He kissed Sid’s nipple and then lightly squeezed his pec. “Soft now,” he said. “Good for hold.”

Sid snorted, but he was also smiling, a flush rising in his cheeks. It was a very good look.

Zhenya kissed a trail between Sid’s pecs and down to the place where his stomach began to rise. Then Zhenya sat back on his knees and spread his hands across that soft expanse. He had taken Sid’s body for granted these past few years, enjoying but not _appreciating_ it, not like it deserved. Sid might say putting weight on wasn’t hard, but Zhenya knew the quantity of after-dinner beers and late-night desserts that had gone into the making of the flesh rolling so pliably between his fingers. He’d been around for most of them.

Zhenya surveyed his fingers, splayed again across Sid’s heavy gut. Heart beating with daring, one eye on Sid’s face in case this was too far, Zhenya said, “Sid, I think maybe you get little bit fat.”

Sid laughed, a choked-off sound. His face was bright red before he hid behind his arm. “Geez, now you tell me. Only a little bit?”

“Maybe not just little bit,” Zhenya allowed. He swept his hands along the sides of Sid’s stomach. He shrugged down along the bed and kissed Sid at the peak of his belly, just above his navel. Sid’s knee twitched—Zhenya had hit a ticklish spot.

And speaking of fat things, there was Sid’s dick, curving up against his stomach and starting to glisten wet. “Oh, you _like_ be little bit fat,” Zhenya said. He watched, mesmerized, as Sid jumped a little. Absently Zhenya took himself in hand.

Sid noticed. “Hey.”

“Shh,” Zhenya said. He palmed Sid’s belly. “Maybe you get bigger, hm? Tomorrow you eat lots, let everyone see you. They say look, Sid get so fat now.”

“Geno,” Sid said, too breathless to be a warning.

“But you look so good, you know? Big fat stomach, go with ass.”

“ _Geno_ ,” Sid said, and now he was definitely laughing.

Zhenya was not laughing. A little more in that vein, and suddenly he didn’t want to talk at all, only look at the Sid buffet spread out before him and pump himself until he came, spattering white flecks across Sid’s belly.

Sid gave him a minute or so to find his breath again, and then he kicked at Zhenya until Zhenya touched him. After Sid came, with a satisfying groan, Zhenya was finally free to collapse next to him. Sid did the wiping off, at least, swiping at Zhenya’s stomach and his own with a tissue.

“Why do you like it?” Sid asked, after a few minutes.

He asked like he expected Zhenya to have two brain cells to rub together right now, about which he was very much mistaken. But Zhenya gradually surfaced until he had the wits to say, “Like what?”

“You know. Me. Like this.”

Zhenya considered that a while. “I don’t know.”

Sid propped up on one elbow. “Seriously? You don’t know?”

Even if he weren’t just coming off a very nice orgasm, Zhenya doubted he could really explain it. He doubted he even knew, exactly. “Maybe—it’s you retire, you know? Before, you belong to hockey, Pens, Canada, NHL—everybody. But not me. Because it’s too hard, be in NHL and be together.” Not that they’d ever tried. They’d never even had the guts to say something, either of them, until Sid’s final brutal injury threw the whole trajectory of their friendship off-course. “And you still play hockey, you don’t look like this.” Zhenya stroked Sid’s stomach. “But now you belong only me.”

“Wow,” Sid said. “That’s—I just thought you had a kink or a something. That’s a lot.”

Zhenya thought about Sid contentedly patting his stomach at Meat and Potatoes, shamelessly flaunting it in front of the guys. A new trickle of desire pooled in Zhenya’s groin. “I maybe also have kink,” Zhenya said. He hid his face, suddenly hot, in his pillow.

Sid laughed and stroked along Zhenya’s back. “It’s cool. I don’t really care much—” A blatant falsehood, because Zhenya had _seen_ how red he’d flushed, but Zhenya would let him keep that delusion for a bit yet. “—and you’re into it. And—thanks, for telling me. I didn’t know you had all that stuff going through your head.”

Zhenya defiantly raised his head. “Sid, I’m so glad.”

Sid looked a little startled. “Oh yeah? About what?”

Zhenya rolled over so he could properly sweep his hand across Sid’s broad belly, still only sparsely haired, after all these years. He thumbed across the thin, dark line of Sid’s treasure trail. Even in Russian, Zhenya would have been helpless; words were insufficient to capture all the bright bursts of feeling in his chest. “Everything.”

Sid reached down and squeezed Zhenya’s hand. “Me, too.”

\--

They wedged themselves into their suits the next afternoon, drove down to the arena, and submitted to another round of gladhanding and photographs. Zhenya had just taken a proffered glass of wine from a tray when he heard someone behind him say, “Sid, it looks like retired life suits you.”

Zhenya turned just in time for Sid to insinuate himself into Zhenya’s side, so that Zhenya had no choice but to put his arm around Sid’s waist. The guy gaped a little. Sid gave him a brilliant smile. “I think it does. I dunno, Geno, don’t you think so?”

And Geno very much did.

[end]


End file.
